Screw or Be Screwed
by Jounetsu-no-Hana
Summary: It's a dog eat dog world. In this situation, Gippal was sort of the three month old puppy, and Rikku was the rottweiler. Oneshot


**This is me. Begging for forgiveness for being totally locked up with Stay. Terribly sorry. :( School. I know, it sucks.**

* * *

Cheaters always are forgiven. Right? I mean, even cheaters have to get a new boyfriend eventually. So why were people still giving her those over the shoulder looks like they knew all her dirty secrets?

Okay. So she screwed everything up with him. But honestly – she got the feeling that she was suffering a lot more than he was. There he was, his toned body glistening with oil grease and sweat, and girls kept coming over to him saying that they would _never ever_ do that to him, and he just nods and goes back to screwing the bolts on the wheel. Speaking of…

If only she could screw him one more time. Maybe she'd stop feeling so bad then. Closure, that's what it would be. There's not much closure in him tossing her things out of the temple, throwing a temper tantrum in front of all his employees, and telling her she wasn't welcome there anymore.

Well, it's not her fault that her alarm clock was broken. And she needed someone to fix it. Someone good at… fixing things…

* * *

He was pretty messed up, he had to admit. It was mostly a 'didn't see that coming' sort of thing. Which he hadn't. And that's easy enough to get over, the surprise. He hadn't been ready for the hurting part. And the part where people had to talk to him like someone had died.

What pissed him off were the people that tried to tell him that she was no good at all. Like he couldn't have _imagined_ what he had been getting into. "Don't you worry, Gip. She's always been a bitch anyway, you're just lucky you got out of there soon enough."

All he heard was, "Well, I guess it's a good thing she fucked someone else sooner rather than later."

But you know, it was still more of a later thing. With them, everything was later. He had known her since he was five.

Rikku seemed like that type of person though. You know? She's only eighteen, he couldn't expect her to settle down with him. Hell, he didn't even want to settle down with her. But she could have had the decency to break it off with him before she…

What he wanted to know was how she could do it to _him_. Some other poor sap, sure. But… why did she have to do it to him?

* * *

Every night, she took her little fouf in the shower and loaded it up with sweet smelling shower gel, then scrubbed at her skin. Hard. Her theory was that if she scrubbed hard enough, the invisible ink tattoos that everyone else could see that had 'cheater' in bright red ink would wash away. And then suddenly, she'd be yesterday's news. No one would care anymore.

But it never worked.

Maybe she needed new bath wash. The kind that has in big yellow letters on it, 'new invisible ink remover!'.

_Cheater_.

She felt like the word – that horrible word that had been following her around like a shadow the past few weeks – was pasted onto her forehead when he glanced up at her. He didn't regard her broken alarm clock, her puckered brow, or her decidedly modest outfit. He just turned back to his machina. No sign of recognition on his face. No surprise. Anger. _Nada_.

Like she was a stranger.

And that was enough to set her insides tingling. Not the good kind though. The kind where she felt like she really needed to heave, but she knew all she would accomplish was making herself feel more miserable.

"I need your help," she said quietly, slurring over the words like she hadn't practiced on the way there what to say if the situation arose where he pretended he didn't know her.

"Oh, _really_?" Gippal asked sarcastically. She shrugged her shoulders a few times and looked at a group of people a few meters away.

"C'mon Gippal, don't be like that," she said. He dropped the wrench in a way that said she was already on his last nerve. He straightened up to his full height and wiped his hands on a rag tucked in his back pocket.

"What do you need?" he asked with cool indifference. Rikku glanced around.

"Can we go inside?"

"I'm busy." She looked around again. Obviously a lie. She checked out what he was working on. Ah. The broken hover. The one that he had been putting off for months, the one he worked on a smidge whenever he had a bit of free time. Seeing as it was almost done, she guessed he had loads of free time.

"You've never had trouble making time before."

"Because that was _before_."

"Gip…" Rikku looked up at him with pleading eyes. He finally sighed and flicked his head towards the temple. She followed him back to his room, and she shut the door behind her. He crossed his arms.

* * *

His employees could take him out for drinks all they wanted. It still didn't change the fact that he was stuck in this temple where all he could envision was her prancing around in her little skirt, sending winks and kisses just for him. He'd never smiled so much in his life.

He kept on changing his sheets, but for some reason, they all smelled like her. Even ones that had been washed since then. He suspected he was just imagining things until he took the sheets off and laid on the bare bed, realizing it was the mattress. Half an hour later, it was hurled out of the temple doors, much to everyone's shock. He slept in a sleeping bag on the floor for the next few nights until a new one came.

He suddenly became paranoid that whenever someone asked him a question or made small talk with him, they meant something else entirely. He became the world's charity case in the blink of an eye, and he was wishing he had never said that day, "Why are we still just friends?"

What he really wanted was for someone to convince him it was all his fault. At least then, he wouldn't feel like he had kicked back and let this all happen.

He was moping, and he knew it. And he knew that she knew it too. And she was probably somewhere else, having the time of her life. Having a great fucking night with her friends, and her beers, and kitten heels.

And he was here with a bad case of beer, not touching one of them, and trying to convince himself that tomorrow he would get off his ass and try to get over it.

* * *

"What?" he asked. Rikku bit down on her bottom lip, and all he could think about was how much he had liked kissing her. He looked away from her with his lips pursed.

"Gippal… why can't we just handle this maturely?" she asked.

"I don't think there's any correct way to handle someone cheating on you," he said.

"I just don't like how we left things." Gippal turned the glare onto her.

"Did you want me to… _forgive you_?" he asked. The way he said it, he made it sound like it was ridiculous. But still…

"I hoped…" she grumbled. There was heavy silence between them. "At least _I_ told you, right?" Gippal just coughed out a laugh at that. More silence. Stretching on and on. "I just thought that maybe eventually… if you could look at me again… we could-."

"_Shit_, Rikku," Gippal snapped, turning his body away from her. She looked up in surprise. He threaded his fingers through his hairline and hunched over slightly, taking deep breaths. She dragged her eyebrows down as she felt an ache running from her stomach straight to her heart.

She knew she had hurt him, sure. No one takes it well to realize that you just weren't worth the time.

She didn't know she had hurt him badly enough for it to last. And she had over a decade of friendship to guarantee on it that she hated seeing him like this.

She knew she'd never get back what they had at that moment. "Rikku… it's _over_," he assured her, untangling his fingers from his hair. She hiccupped out a sob, and he didn't even glance her way. She wouldn't be getting sympathy from him anytime soon. He was too busy trying to hide his own wounds.

"I-I know it is," she mumbled out. "But we just… were good for each other, y'know?"

"Obviously I wasn't good enough for you, was I?" he asked with a wry grin on his face. Her face pinched up.

"No, Gippal, don't think that-."

"I have to get back to work," he said. He brushed past her, throwing the door open, needing fresh air desperately. He got outside and breathed in deeply. Rikku stayed in his room for a couple more minutes, memorizing where everything was.

He watched her leave. As soon as she was gone, he would go into the temple and sleep off the newest misery. Newest misery: She wanted him back. And he was too fucking stubborn to just let it go.

As he screwed the top off another bottle of beer and settled down on his mattress-store smelling bed, he came to the conclusion that if it mattered that much to her, she'd be back.

* * *

Rikku threw her bag down on the kitchen table and dropped the still broken alarm clock on the couch. She needed something to occupy her, but when you're miserable like _this_, there's really nothing to do to cope. She thought that the only thing she wanted to do was just talk to someone about it. But the only person she would want to talk to about it was Gippal. Somehow, she knew that Yuna and Paine would have a 'serves you right' demeanor. Which, yeah, she did deserve it. But she had a feeling that in a _different_ situation, Gip wouldn't judge her. She dragged her teeth over her bottom lip.

She wouldn't bother him again. He made it clear what he thought of her.

But she also knew that he knew that they were right for each other. Gippal's not one to let a good thing go.

So, if he ever forgives her, she was sure he'd come back.

She turned on the sphere and curled up with a pillow, letting the images flash by without catching a glimpse of them. Her heart ached like it hadn't before, and she knew that it meant something. Knew that deep down, she was trying to pretend that he would forgive her. Or that he'd somehow _forget_.

Cheaters are forgiven. By _other_ people. But the one person that she needed to forgive her wasn't going to. And _other_ peoples' opinions didn't matter so much compared to his.

She threw the stupid alarm clock across the floor, putting a visible scuff on her wall. She groaned and dropped her head into the pillow.

Tomorrow would be better.

* * *

_review, pretty please?_


End file.
